1999 Maison Nicolas VdP d'OC Merlot, $4.99 at Sam's. I thought this one had to be plonk at the price, but was very pleasantly surprised last night when we tried it with smothered roundsteak, mashers and steamed veggie medley. Tastes like it's spent its short life in stainless steel and glass, with no trace of noticeable wood. A nose of clean fruit, a lot more fruit on the tongue-tip, and a softness across the palate that belies its modest origins, with a very pleasant finish. Really tough to beat for a 5-buck vin ordinaire! Picked up a few more today, along with more of the Nicolas Chardonnay and Berteau CdR.

You're about right, WW.
Drew, the roundsteak is pretty tough, and needs tenderizing somehow. It's from the hip area of the critter, and provides the meat for Swiss steak, stir-fry, smothered steak, and probably some other beef dishes that I'm forgetting right now. The cut of beef is known as the "round". The steaks need to be cut fairly thin, on the order of 1/2" or so, and then pan-fried or stewed in juices. You wouldn't want to barbecue one of those suckers, unless you marinated it for several hours beforehand. I've not tried it that way. Roundsteaks are usually the last part of a beef order that we consume; by the time we gnaw through a few weeks' worth of Swiss steak, smothered steak and stir-fry, we're ready for another side of beef. (I'm to pick one up Tuesday.)

According to a wine book I have, Vin de Pays doesn't necessarily mean it's bad -- just that it's outside the normal appelation borders. Vin de Table, the book says, implies much more that a wine is inferior. Would you all agree?

True enough, Joey. Vin de Pays literally means "wine of the country" or "country wine". There's no judgement call associated with it being a VdP: it can be "good", or it can be "bad" (although those words are so subjective that we rarely use them here). The region of the Oc is actually producing some very interesting wines at bargain prices, so a VdP d'Oc gets my attention.

Helotes was once a day's ride NW from downtown San Antonio, on the stage line to Bandera. Today, SA has us surrounded.

It was once the norm for towns in Texas to be 15-20 miles apart, depending on terrain and water supply, to allow a rider to easily travel from one to the next in a day on horseback. Now, they're frequently contiguous, with the city limits of one butting up against the limits of another. Or in the case of our little township of 4500 souls, being surrounded by a sprawling city of 1.2 million. (Helotes tripled in size from 1990 to 2000.)

BTW, Helotes (hell-OAT-is) is taken from the Spanish word for corn. When Spaniards entered this area in the early 18th century, they found the local tribes cultivating corn in the little valleys among the hills, and they began to refer to it as "the corn place". Today, an ear of corn is featured prominently in the township's official seal.

You guys are both right. My preferred wine shops are about 12 miles from home, in the north central part of the big city. And until recently, the nearest Sam's was almost as far; but a new one opened a few weeks ago that's half that distance, and it has a pretty fair wine selection. And a Costco is being built barely a mile from them. Out here, we now have a Loew's and Home Depot within a couple of miles of us, along with a bazillion other shops, all within the last two years. It's time to get out of Dodge and head for the hills!